Big Bang

In project management, a project that has no staged delivery. The customer must wait, sometimes months, before seeing anything. At the end of the wait comes a "big bang".

Proper noun

The cosmicevent that marks the beginning of time and the rapid expansion of space for the visible universe. The evolution of the universe since that beginning point is described by the Big Bang Theory.

big bang - Investment & Finance Definition

A
significant change, often as a result of legal or regulatory changes. The term
has acquired many different uses in the financial markets. For example, in the
U.S., a Big Bang occurred in 1975 when stockbrokers stopped receiving fixed
commissions, which opened the way for the first discount brokerage firms to set
up business. As investment banks earned smaller trading commissions, they began
to look for other ways to generate income to support trading-related services,
such as research. Investment banking revenues replaced trading commissions as a
way to pay for research analysts,
so analysts began working more closely with each other. The Big Bang reached a
crescendo during the 1990s as the stock market reached historic highs. After
the stock market began to fall sharply in the first half of 2000,
investigations by regulators and legal authorities put a damper on the close
working relationship as they alleged conflicts of interest.

In the U.K., Big Bang refers
to the deregulation of the financial markets that occurred in 1987 and 1988,
when a series of reforms of the London Stock Exchange were implemented; these
reforms allowed investors to trade without going through market makers, or companies that were given exclusive rights to trade
stocks on the exchange. The reforms also allowed financial institutions to
expand into many different areas of financial services so that customers could
deal with one bank for various investment purposes instead of dealing with
several. Japan experienced a Big Bang when the foreign exchange market was
deregulated in 1998.